PHT2/4 PHILOSOPHY TRIPOS Part II Friday 27 May 2011 09.00 to 12.00 Paper 4 EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY FROM KANT Answer three questions only. Write the number of the question at the beginning of each answer. If you are answering an either/or question, indicate the letter as well. STATIONERY REQUIREMENTS 20 Page Answer book x 1 Rough Work Pad You may not start to read the questions printed on the subsequent pages of this question paper until instructed that you may do so by the Invigilator
-2 - PHT2/4 1 Either (a) 'Transcendental idealism is the price one has to pay for transcendental arguments.' Discuss. Or (b) What is Kant's best argument for the thesis that things in themselves are not spatio-temporal? Is that argument sound? 2 What, if anything, is refuted by Kant's Refutation of Idealism? 3 Does Kant succeed in justifying the claim that the categories possess 'objective validity'? 4 Critically assess the account of freedom offered by Kant in the Antinomies. 5 How close did Hegel come to saying that the emergence of his own philosophy was the ultimate purpose of reality? 6 Assess Hegel's assessment of the philosophy of Kant. 7 Either (a) 'Hegel's argument in the Sense-Certainty chapter in the Phenomenology of Spirit is undermined by the elementary conflation of a universal with a complex particular.' Is it? Or (b) Exactly what, in Hegel's view, does the Sense-Certainty chapter show to be impossible? 8 Critically examine Hegel's account of the Master-Slave Dialectic. 9 Is Nietzsche's account of the ascetic ideal able to bear the explanatory weight he wishes? 10 'Nietzsche's critique of morality can only lead to nihilism.' Discuss. 11 Does Nietzsche have a coherent account of the relation between individual morality and the values instantiated in cultures? 12 Is Nietzsche right to think that there can be no Christian tragedy? Does it matter? END OF PAPER